Merry Christmas Eve!

I thought I would share a few pics of our decorations today. I'm still working on my December Daily album and all of these pics are going in that as well. I'm up to Day 12! I won't get it finished before Christmas, but I have everything I need to get it done quickly after the first of the year.


Here is one of our new decorations for the year. We found this angel at Home Decorators. (This is Chris' company, the same place we found our clocks.) She stands about 3 feet tall. I just fell in love with her in the store and had to have her! She actually stands in our entry way, but I thought she looked better in front of the tree for a picture.

And here is our annual visit with the big guy.

This is our house with the lights on it. We only do the part that we can reach from the ground. :)

And here is our tree in the living room.


Last night I finished wrapping all the presents and put all of them under the tree. This morning the boys were checking all of them out and I overheard this:

Spencer says to Connor,

"We better practice our kisses and hugs today
because I think we are going to be giving lots of them tomorrow. "

Merry Christmas

New Clocks!!!

This post is mostly so that our family can see that we finally filled the blank space above our mantle! Finally! We moved into this house about 2 1/2 years ago. Every time we have family come visit, everyone always says we need something big to fill the space above the mantle. As you can see in the following pictures our family room is 18 feet high and we finally found something!

This is the before picture to give you an idea of
the space we were looking to fill.

And here is the after.
We found these clocks at Home Decorators Collections. This is Chris' company. We were in the store here last weekend looking at Christmas decorations and came across these clocks. I thought they would be perfect for above the mantle. I have wanted a big clock for this space ever since we moved in, but never found any I liked.

Here is a closeup. The big one in the middle is for Local Time. Then the smaller ones are for times in Los Angeles, New York, Beijing, and London.

Do you think they are on the right place on the wall? I'm not sure if they need to be a little lower or not. Let me know what you think!

Christmas Cards

These are the cards I made for family. I'm pretty sure everyone has got them by now, so I won't spoil the surprise!
The tutorial for these cards is found here. These were pretty labor intensive, but I think they turned out great! I made mine with the Kraft paper from Hobby Lobby. The snowflake stamps are from PaperTreyInk. I just discovered their stamps a few months ago, and they are so pretty! And a good quality. And the edges were done with the handy Fiskars Threading Water punch.

And I even used up some old supplies, i.e those large candy cane and snowmen eyelets.




I made lots of other cards too for friends and Chris' co-workers. I didn't take pictures of those. I feel like all I have done lately is make cards! I think I have made 60 cards so far and I still have a few more to make!

Merry Christmas!

Days 3,4 and 5

I still haven't got past day 5 yet. I really hope to get caught up this weekend. I got sidetracked trying to finish up my Christmas cards. And I still haven't got those in the mail either! Oops! I'm a little behind this year. The month of December just seems to be flying by. I do have most of my Christmas shopping done though! Yea!

Day three is of my Santa Tree Topper.

The writing on the strip seems to be coming off, so I'm probably going to have to redo that.

Day Four is a picture of our tree in the living room.

Day Five is a pretty self-explanatory.

(Except for the fact that this is a completely staged photo!

Sssh, don't tell anyone!)

I hope everyone has a great weekend! I think we are going to see Santa tomorrow. :D

I'm Here!

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. We've been pretty busy. I'm still working on my December Daily album. I have up through Day 5 completed. I hope to post those layouts tomorrow. It is pretty gloomy and rainy here today, so not a good day to take pictures.

On Saturday, we went to the annual Cookie Decorating party. Our friends, Patty and Matt, hold this party every year in their neighborhood and invite us too. They have been doing this the last 4 or 5 years. They hold it in one of their neighbors' heated garage. That is why you see power tools in the background! It is a great place for it though, because once the kids are done decorating, they just lift the garage door and hose it clean. Perfecto!

Here a few pics from the night. Santa Claus even came for a surprise visit!

Connor is working on one of his masterpieces!

This is one of Spencer's. Doesn't it look yummy? (Maybe if you are eight, right? ;) )

And yep, he ate it right away. Can you say sugar rush??!!!!

December Daily Album

I'm off to a fantastic start! It is day two and I'm not behind! Woo Hoo! For those non-scrappers out there who are wondering what I'm talking about, the December Daily album is the idea of the talented Ali Edwards. You can go here to see her fantastic work. Basically what me and a bunch of other scrappers are doing is documenting something every day about how we celebrate the holidays. I wanted to do this last year, but never got to it. I'm really hoping to be able to keep it up this year. I have all the base pages ready, so all I need to do is take a picture every day and do a bit of journaling. Sounds easy, right?! Wish me luck! Here are my first two pages!

The journaling on the 2nd page says, " I normally go to Starbucks once or twice a month. But at holiday time, the Peppermint Mocha Twist has me there a couple of times a week." And yes, I did journal right on the Starbucks thingy. (I'm sure there is a technical word for it but I have no idea what it is, so I'm just going to call it "thingy"!)

It's looking a lot like Christmas!

We woke up to snow this morning! Not much, but it was perfect for this......

Happy Thanksgiving!

May you Gobble till you Wobble!!!

2008 Wish Books

Well, I got one thing accomplished on my list of 1,000 things! It isn't really 1,000 things, but it sure feels like it some days!

I started making these little books last year. I thought it would be fun for the boys to each have a little book they could write their Christmas wishes in. And on the plus side for me, I get a neat little keepsake from each year. For instance last year, Spencer was into rocks. Way into rocks! He filled up 3 pages with the names of rocks. I kept telling him to just write ROCKS, but no, he had to list them all! It is funny to look back on that this year. I had completely forgot about it until I unpacked last year's books. I can't imagine what it will be like to look back on these in 10, 20 and (gasp!) 30 years!

So all of you out there with kids might want to start up this tradition yourselves! I guarantee you will get a good laugh and a "You wanted that???!!!" in a few years!

I used the Zutter Acrylic 4x4 covers and my Bind it All. I used Staz-On ink on the covers.

The insides are the same for both of the books. There are a total of 5 pages in each book.

I'm turning last years books into ornaments for the tree. I'm going to add a ribbon loop and hang it up. Thanks for visiting me!!

Show Off Friday

Connor has some crazy math skills! We noticed this over the last summer when his Grandpa Pete started asking him some really difficult math questions. We thought they were too hard for him, but he kept getting them right! So now whenever we want to impress people, we ask Connor math questions! He just turned 5 and he does math better than me. Seriously! I have never been able to do math in my head. I have to write it down and then I can do the problem. I think you will be very impressed with my very brainy 5 year old!

And what he is pointing to at the end is the little piece of paper I had written all the problems down on. I needed a little cheat sheet for me so I would know he is getting them right! You know I can't do math in my head!!!

Birthday Cards made with Black Cardstock!

And nope, they aren't "Over the Hill" cards!

I used the Core'dinations Black Magic (Spellcaster) cardstock. This cardstock is really cool! On one side is the black and the other side is all different colors. What makes this so neat is that when you tear it, sand it, or emboss it (like I did) the core of the cardstock is the colored side. This is kind of hard to explain, so I will just show you!

My cards are 5 1/2" x 5 1/2". I used the Cuttlebug Swiss Dots embossing folder and because the card is larger than the folder, I had to run it through a couple of times. I just matched up the dots and then ran it back through. I really love how the green core shows up this way.

I then used a scrap and cut out my scalloped square with a Nestabilities die and topped it off with some prima flowers, a little bling, and a pretty iridescent ribbon.

And what I really love is when I open the card, the inside perfectly coordinates with the outside and I didn't have to glue an extra piece of cardstock inside. It is just one piece of cardstock!

Here is my purple one.

Conversation with Connor

A little background information for those who don't know this about the little guy in the above picture. Connor hates to be called cute. Hates it. Anytime you say "Connor you are a cutie!" he responds emphatically "I'm not cute, I'm handsome!" He has done this pretty much from the moment he could talk. We have no idea where this came from or why he hated being called cute. But it sure is fun to tease him and hear him get all mad at being called cute. You know, one of those fun things we parents get to do to our kids.
So now to our conversation the other day. I was teasing him calling him a cutie patootie and of course, he didn't like it. He is handsome!!! And for some reason I finally thought to ask him why he hates being called cute. So here is the conversation:

Me: Connor why don't you like being told your cute?

Connor: Because I just don't like it. I'm handsome and Spencer is the cute one.

Me: What does it mean to be handsome?

Connor (pausing here to really think about his answer): It means you really like yourself.

Me (Really loving that answer!): That is a fantastic answer! But then what does it mean if you are cute?

Connor (again thinking carefully about his answer): Cute means that you only half way like yourself.

Me: Well, then shouldn't Spencer be handsome too, because he really likes himself.

Connor (again pondering his answer): Yea, okay Spencer can be handsome too.

(And now for the big finish..........)






Dad can be the cute one!!!!



(Just for the record, they are all very handsome!)

One more Halloween Post.

I have been working on this mini book for the last couple of years. I got it all caught up this year; including this year's Halloween pics!

This whole project started with a Frankenstein I bought years ago at Target on clearance. I started to take Spencer's picture next to it year after year. It has now become a tradition for us to take pictures next to "Frank" every year.

This book is fun for me to look at too because I can see how my scrapbooking has changed and the different products that are out there now. I used a lot of stickers those first couple of years and now I hardly ever use stickers.

I also added the acrylic years to it. I was so pleased with how they turned out! I cut them out on my Cricut. I used the Graphically Speaking cart with the Design Studio. I just welded a rectangle onto the year so I would have a place to punch the holes to put them in my book. And then I stamped them with different "spooky" stamps!


So here is my "Halloweens with Frank" mini! (I have lots of pictures!)